The Matchmaker
by alinova
Summary: Josephine dies on her 20th birthday. She's saved by a girl she went to high school with, and awakes as a newborn vampire. Desperately missing her family, while also hiding from them as they search for her, Josephine has to let them assume she's gone missing, never to return. Josephine juggles her new life, family and love interest with her old ones.
1. The Rayne-Sawyer Family

Josie really didn't mind the cold, she wasn't bothered by the gloominess or the rain. She didn't care that wolves could be heard howling in the forest when it wasn't entirely realistic that they would reside in the same dense, thin areas of forest positioned so closely to human populated areas all the time. In fact, she didn't even pay too much attention to the strange behaviour and features of the Cullens' guests from the previous year - creepy eyes and all.

What Josephine did find upsetting was the complete lack of faith she had in any prospects for her future. Don't get the girl wrong - she adored Forks - the people, the community, the weather, the quirks...

But there were very little resources when it came to ambitions beyond small town life. Trinity Sawyer had always told her little girl to aspire for more and embrace the wildest of her dreams, but had somehow figured that tiny, dreary Forks, Washington was the best place for her five kids to do just that. Josephine was only the second oldest, and she knew how damned she was career wise. It was all well and good for her brother, Teddy. He was tall and naturally fit and imposing. With his laidback charm and speedy thinking (and running) Theodore had always been a shoo-in for a top notch member of the local police department. He had never had any problems with his future.

The sibling below Josie in age by just over a year was Thea - soft, wise and willowy Thea - with her pale blond hair and bottomless eyes. Teddy and Josephine had been the two born from their mother's first marriage, while Thea was the first and only from the second. Despite that, she was untroubled, ever-kind and somehow all knowing. If Teddy was social and Josephine was creative, Thea was spiritual - and had found her calling when she was 14. She loved all things mystical and soul searching, and possessed the ability to make you really believe and feel what she was telling you about your fortune, your aura, or your future. Thea was peaceful and calming, so Josie very much doubted that she worried about anything, let alone her future.

The fourth sibling down the line was Raksha - whose name meant demon, but whose appearance portrayed otherwise. She was the product of Trinity's brief fling with a guy named Shapur Kaveh while she lived and studied in Persia. From her father, Raksha inherited a rich, middling skin tone and dark, exotic eyes. Long eyelashes and longer luscious hair to boot, and Raksha was noticeably foreign. From their mother, she got her small frame, coppery highlights and redeeming personality traits. All in all, Raksha was a small curiosity, and would always live up to her namesake. Josephine reckoned this particular sibling was most likely to share her despair.

Last but not least was the little boy kicking away inside Trinity's swollen belly. He was the only child in the family lucky enough to be the baby born of a love that would last. Mystery baby's dad, Dan Sawyer, was the love of Trinity's life, and Josephine couldn't explain why, but she just knew it. From the moment she had met her stepdad, she had never questioned it, and accepted it to be a fact that he was her mother's soulmate.

"Yo." Josephine turned her attention from the window to observe her sister in the doorway. Raksha was only just getting up, and looked like some kind of sleepy dragon. "Your toast is burning."

Her sister moved at a mummified pace to the sink, while Josephine sprung off her stool to go salvage her breakfast. Teddy's annoying super hearing prevailed again, and he laughed from somewhere upstairs. Josephine frowned, and turned to her sister. Raksha was smirking.

A substitute banana later, Josephine trudged out into the damp world outside and set off down the road, as she always did, to make her way down to her favourite part of Forks forestry - her camera hung around her neck, and her notebook stuffed firmly into her coat packet. She yawned and scratched at an itch persisting at the spot behind and just below her right ear, and shivered at the chill in the air that she couldn't feel through her parka but was still aware of.

The forest was quiet that day, eerie in it's near silence. Usually there was at least a low hubbub of animal related sounds - birds trilling or little furry things darting through the greenery of the forest floor - but today there was almost nothing. As she trod her way carefully through, Josie could only pick up on the leaves rustling with the wind in the trees. It was as if the animals had all abandoned the area, had scarpered and run away.

Josephine stilled, a faint sound from somewhere ahead of her caught her attention. She waited.

Silence.

Ignoring the sinking feeling in her stomach, Josephine kept going forwards, albeit more quietly now, until she had found the intruder. A beautiful golden head of hair cascaded down the stranger's back, a halo practically atop their head. The sound went off again, and Josephine flinched. In a motion that was quicker than swift, the person turned around, and revealed themself to be Rosalie Hale, an expensive looking camera in her delicate hands, and a carefully blank expression on her face. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and painfully perfect. Amongst the trees, she looked like an exquisite painting of an angel amongst nature.

The sound from before was just the shutter going off, Josie surmised.

She could feel Rosalie's shrewd, amber eyes studying her, landing briefly on the camera and focusing longer on her face. Oddly, Rosalie said nothing, and simply turned her attention back to the trees, shutter sound going off a few times as she snapped more shots. Josephine tried to relax, but the weird lack of ambience around them bothered her too much to allow it. As if she had somehow sensed it, Rosalie's comment cut sharply through the quiet.

"There are too many predators nearby."

"What?"

Rosalie looked at her. "For the animals." Josephine felt stupid. Rosalie sniffed, looking somehow superior. "So they're hiding. That's why it's quiet."

Josephine nodded, although she wasn't so sure it made sense. "Oh."

"It's rare. It's not commonly reported, but it does happen."

Why was she explaining herself so much?

Josie just nodded. Rosalie seemed to accept that, and walked gracefully away. Josephine had barely blinked three times, and she was gone.


	2. Crêpes Suzette

Her name was Josephine Luella Suzette Rayne-Sawyer. Josephine because her mum did this thing where she picked the names of her children out of a hat. Luella because it was the name of Trinity Sawyer's best friend, and Suzette because it was her aunt's name, and Trinity loved Suzette.

Out of her two middle names, Josephine had always thought Luella would have been the one people would focus on, but it turned out she had underestimated the creativity of the friends and family she grew up with. Seemingly out of nowhere, her dad had started calling her Crêpes Suzette, and eventually, so did everyone she knew. It was annoying at first, but affectionate and daft later, until her dad died. Then it became raw and painful and somber. After that, nobody mentioned Crêpes Suzette to her ever again.

So, when Esme Cullen told her she was learning to make Crêpes Suzette, it was a huge shock - equivalent to the world falling out from beneath her feet.

But that was getting too far ahead. Let's backtrack.

On the day that Josephine died, she was turning 20. It was February 14th, 2013. In the morning she had happily wolfed down her birthday tradition of pancakes for breakfast, and between that and pancakes for lunch she had set up her brand new easel and set to work painting Thea with all her tarot cards and incense and her depthless grey eyes. Due to be back for dinner (more pancakes), Josie had set out to traipse her way through the more mountain-y areas on the outskirts of town, making her way towards the waterfall in hopes of some crystal clear shots with her new lense.

She even remembered that she had been humming the song they played in that episode of Grey's Anatomy when Denny DuQuette died. It was called Grace, and it was by Kate Havnevik, she'd found out upon looking it up later - when she had time to spare. Funnily enough, the bit that was foggy was the actual death bit. Josie knew she had worn the wrong shoes - Teddy had told her so and she specifically remembered telling him she'd be careful - and she knew she had slipped and nearly cracked her head clean open on some rocks.

There had been a river - a babbling brook. Shallow enough that the rocks peeked up above the water level. The cause of Josephine's death was a small stream.

One wet looking stepping stone between herself and the other side, and Josie had broken her promise to her older brother by taking the risk and jumping from her rock to the next.

Trinity, Dan, Thea, Raksha, Teddy and unborn baby. Wyatt and Jodie and Kris. Her family and her friends. Josephine listed them off to herself as she died.

But things had not gone to plan. There was someone else - inexplicably - there was a presence panicking over her limp body. Josie was fading and fading fast, the darkness was taking hold; but this faceless person was unexpected and unexplained and it made her hold on to the very edge.

Suddenly, there was pain. Sharp, searing pain. It coursed through her like righteous fire and burned every fibre of her being so strongly that she was convinced this person had just set her on fire. Something darted quickly over the source of the first area of pain, and sealed it over, both doubling the pain and guiding it. Josephine could just about clench her fists, nails digging painfully into the flesh of her palms, but could not open her eyes. Her breathing was barely more than laboured gasps but it was somehow still going.

There was another stab of blinding, merciless pain and this time it elicited a scream from her corpse. The unknown presence placed iron clad grips on her arms and legs and pinned her to the ground with unnatural strength. Josephine could hear them speaking, but couldn't make it out. The fingers of her right hand came into contact with the stream, the water seeming much stronger than she felt.

Again, something warm and vaguely comforting soothed over the point of inflicted torture, and the agony continued. She couldn't take much more, she knew. Her attacker would get their wish soon enough, and she would slip away.

Unfortunately not.

The roaring, cruel flames flickered hotly through and through her for what felt like hours on end. Long after she lost sense of time in her endless torture, Josie recounted her assailant inflicting her with more jabs of added pain at least four times over since she had felt the full force of the first few. Every time something had brushed almost apologetically over each injury, and every instance was a way for her to distinguish separate sources of the agony.

Time meant nothing and so nothing stretched out like a blanket of galaxies with dozens of little universes and black holes in place for her to suffer through. Constantly, she felt like she was reaching the end, or that she would finally be able to die and be at peace. But death never came, and the hell inside her raged on relentlessly. A minuscule sense of relief was felt very, very distantly that whoever had been hurting her had stopped adding to the waves and waves and waves of her inner hellfire.

What had she done... to deserve this?

Josephine had been really good all her life, she reckoned. She was realistic, sure, and that sometimes led to pessimism; but she was not one to inflict that on others. She'd always treated people well. Josie followed Teddy's example with friendliness and goodness, had taken a natural liking to being as kind and wise as Thea, adopted Raksha's love of culture and knowledge, and... and...

Josephine had still ended up here.

Wherever that was. Hell? Probably. Whatever it was she'd done, she was sure it was in there in her life's history somewhere. There had to have been someone she'd hurt or something she'd set in motion - accident or not, she guessed sins were sins.

On and on the fire raged, the white hot pain so intense she felt like her insides were being incinerated and bleached, seared away to make her a hollow carcass. An Egyptian mummy. Raksha would have loved that, just not for Josephine.

Nothingness stretched on further and further still, and Josephine was being repositioned, restrained and held back. She couldn't tell if it was really happening or not, but the sensation wasn't unlike being pinned down by the sadist by the stream. The strength was scarily familiar - inhuman. She would have shuddered, had she not been so busy thrashing about.

After what felt like five or six consecutive forevers, when she was only just becoming numb to the pain, it... changed. Suddenly, it wasn't horrifying lava but something cool and soft and healing. Nothing came to mind in putting it into words, but it was everything the previous horror wasn't. Every now and again there would be a sharp lick of that same pain, but it wasn't all encompassing anymore, and she could tolerate it because the cool waves were so relieving that she could handle it. Suddenly, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

With that hope came impatience. Josephine could sense something coming, arriving faster and faster until it would slow down, only to speed back up and then convert itself to a snail's pace. It was maddening - infuriating. If she wasn't so clearly healed up and past the point of danger, she would have given up.

But eventually, the moment arrived.

Josephine opened her eyes.


	3. Bella’s First

Particles within particles within particles. She could see every facet, every aspect of... everything with such laser precise definition and clarity that it rendered her inanimate. Impossible, unknown colours spilled across her periphery - her periphery, which was so much wider. Every sense was beyond heightened. There were no words for it... she was just aware... of everything. An entirely new world faced her, and for the first time the possibilities felt endless.

But with all her new awareness and all her new shiny faculties, Josephine found herself quickly becoming acutely aware of others in the room.

She didn't know what took over - instinct, perhaps - but something primal deep in the very pit of her stomach told her to hiss and to hide. So, she moved at what she assumed had to be the speed of light, and was almost at the door when something caught her around the middle like a steam train and floored her.

"Do not move." It was a Southern accent, deep and dark and wildly authoritative. Whoever it belonged to was terrifyingly handsome, like something the greatest artist in the world could only dream up, and never manage to do justice to on paper. But he was soft, too - something was fulfilled about him. He was whole even though he was broken. An exquisite gold chain of light was looped around his middle, luminescent and other worldly. It connected him to something beyond this room - and anchored him to whatever was on the other end. Bewildered and as terrified as she was, Josephine could only stare up at the authority above her in awe. He was happy, he was... he had everything he ever wanted or needed. That filled her with some sense of satisfaction.

The strange-

Oh, not strange. Jasper Hale.

Jasper, she realised suddenly, had a hand around her neck, and with that very grip upon her person he was now lifting her up, establishing his dominance. Hard eyes met hers furiously and unflinchingly.

"Bring harm to anyone and I will not hesitate to cut you down, understand me?" Josie nodded, eyes wide.

Jasper exhaled, head ducking in an acceptance of her understanding, and dropped her unceremoniously (but a lot more gently) onto the floor.

Surprising herself, she didn't fall on her backside but landed on her feet like a cat. Or a panther. She certainly moved with the untamed grace of one.

It was then that Bella Swan Cullen moved herself into Josephine's line of sight and captured her attention.

"Crap, I do know you."

Josie tilted her head, surprised that Bella even knew who she was. They'd gone to the same school - had been attending at the same time and everything, but Josephine was a few years below Bella (or maybe it was just one, she couldn't remember), and had observed from a distance as she met Edward and fell so deeply and instantly in love that she was all but blind to the world around her. Not that Josephine blamed her. Love was hard to get right.

"Her name starts with a J." Bella was speaking again, but it was clear she was talking to Jasper now. "Joanna... no, um. Hmm. Jodie? Something like that, uh-"

Suddenly, Bella snapped her fingers, the sound resounding like granite colliding with marble, and pointed at Josephine triumphantly. "Josephine! Josephine... Rays! Reed! Rayne! Josie Rayne, you're Josie Rayne." Bella looked, very briefly, like she'd won a great achievement, but then something dawned on her, and she seemed to remember something very serious and very urgent. Josephine glanced between Bella and Jasper. They were having a silent conversation, conversing with their eyes.

In the sudden silence, Josie became aware of a horrible dry, scratchy, parched pain that shot up and down her throat. It was so prominent that she clawed at the skin there, all of a sudden feeling like she was choking on a red hot branding iron. Bella and Jasper flew into action, each taking a hold of her, and transporting her very, very, very swiftly outside. They flew through the air, faster than Josephine had previously thought possible. Trees whizzed harmlessly by them, rustling in their wake. All the while the scratching, burning feeling persisted, driving Josie half mad with it's insistence.

When they stopped, they were hidden away behind a cluster of rocks.

Somewhere ahead of them, Josephine could feel there was something warm and rich and pulsing - tantalisingly close - it was the most impossible thing in the world to resist it, and without instruction she was raining down on the doe with the desperation of someone who had been starving for thousands of years.

But that didn't sate her. Like lightning, she shot from one target to the next until she was left heaving and wild eyed, coated in blood but... sated. For now.

Josephine found Jasper and Bella stood before her, regarding her warily. Miraculously, she could actually focus on them now.

One of them was about to speak when it occurred to her what she had just done. What the implications were - what she was.

Josephine looked to Bella, somehow sure that she was responsible, and fell to her knees in front of her. Josie's voice was timid and small, and for the first time since waking up, she spoke.

"What have you done to me?!"


	4. An Apology

Time held no consequence anymore. It still moved and proof of that was present in every room, on every clock, screen or watch face - but Josephine found that it didn't feel the same. It didn't inch by nor did it flow faster than she wanted it to. Time was separate from her now, inconsequential. She still remembered the years it ruled her life: at school, at home, or at her part time job over on the reservation. Josephine used to keep a constant watch on the time - and she did now, but only to make sure it was still going, and that reality wasn't folding around her.

Carlisle was accompanying her now, while Bella conferred with Jasper and Edward in the room farthest from her, on the upmost floor of the building. She could still kind of make out what they were saying, but only very faintly. Josie was grasping only the tail end of words and sentences. Things like "couldn't let her die" and "responsibility". She recognised that it was Bella speaking the most out of the three of them.

In between long pauses, Carlisle would attempt to talk to her, soothe her or ask her questions. Josephine never answered him, partly because she wasn't convinced that this wasn't some insane, hyper-realistic dream. Mostly, though, she was just... frightened. She was small for her age, and apart from the death of her father and her mother's tumultuous love life, Josie and her siblings had been granted a very sheltered upbringing.

"Your family..." Carlisle ventured. "Did you tell them you were going up into the mountains?"

Josephine shook her head. Even with so many things she needed to focus on, every little aspect of every single thing in the room, outside the windows - even in the air - caught her attention and distracted her so entirely that her eyes would dart all over the place; never settling on one little thing. It was all so overwhelming - still - and if the companionable silence Carlisle provided wasn't so easy and comfortable, Josephine may have been out of her mind, in a state of mania.

"How many are there, Josephine?" Her gaze softened, focus finally settling on one solid thing as she turned her attention towards Carlisle. "Waiting for you at home?"

Out of nervous habit, Josephine licked her lips - even though there was no need for the moisture anymore.

"... Six."

Carlisle looked absolutely heartbroken, though his steady expression barely faltered. It was in the minuscule way his posture dropped, but visible nowhere else.

"I see." Josephine ducked her head, but made no effort to respond further. There were snippets of the discussion taking place upstairs drifting down to them, and that must have made her appear stricken once again, because Carlisle spoke to her - his tone louder than it was before.

"Tell me about your family."

Fidgeting though it felt unnatural to do so, Josie fixated her gaze on him once again.

"Well, there's... my mum, Trinity. She's pregnant with a baby boy right now. He... doesn't... have a name yet." Carlisle was nodding, encouraging her to continue. "Teddy's the oldest, he's a police officer around here. Then there's, uh, me - I'm second in line. After me comes..." Josephine gulped past the sudden rise of panic that lodged itself in her throat. "Thea. She's... Thea, a-and then there's Raksha-"

"Ah, that's Persian." He interjected calmly.

"It is, yeah. Her Dad's Persian."

"A lovely language." Carlisle smiled.

"She taught herself to speak it fluently."

"And how old is she?"

"15. She's 15."

"That's remarkable. Now, you said there were six? Who's the sixth, Josephine?"

"My stepdad, Dan. The new baby's his."

Jasper, Bella, and her husband were suddenly present, standing in the doorway. Edward regarded her carefully, his eyes reminding her of Thea's by the way they searched and probed. Within another flurry of movement, everyone was sat down - Jasper by Carlisle in the next armchair across, and Bella on Josie's left, with Edward on the stool to their right. Bella laid a flawless, porcelain hand on her arm, and presented Josephine with a tactfully arranged expression of sincerity. Nevertheless, she still felt like she had been called into the Principal's office and was about to have some bad news broken to her. Bella was, afterall, looking at her like she was a child - or a bomb - like she had to choose her words very carefully, in case she imploded.

"You died today."

Josie nodded, knowing that to be a fact. "Yeah."

"I was there - at the stream - I saw you."

Bella's eyes were locked onto her own, and Josephine knew what she was saying was probably extremely important, but she couldn't shake the certainty she had that the last time she had seen Bella; her eyes had been brown. "When you slipped... I was right behind you."

Josephine nodded again. "I could hear you."

"Mhm... and the pain, I'm sure you remember the pain. That was... my venom. I bit you - loads of times - because you were dying, and-" Bella petered off, Edward catching her attention from over Josie's shoulder.

"What are you... saying..."

"That I- that we - are vampires."

There was a beat of silence, and then Josephine looked to Carlisle for confirmation, assuming him to be the sanest person in the room. He nodded, and she closed her eyes.

"You're not dreaming," Edward murmured. "Pinch yourself if you want, but you're wide awake."

Josie turned to look at him for a second. Absentmindedly, she did as instructed. Nothing happened, he was right.

"I changed you, Josephine. I am so- I..." There was so much emotion in Bella's voice, all of a sudden. "I know that I just... I just took your entire life away from you - your whole family and everything, and I'm so sorry-" Edward was at Bella's shoulder, the paragon of husbandly comfort and consolation. All Josie could do was stare.

"What?"

"You're a newborn, Josephine. A newly turned vampire. You can't go near your family for a long while, because you can't control your thirst for human blood. That frenzy you felt around the animals you fed on in the forest - it's a million times worse with humans. You'll hurt them, Josephine. I'm so, so sorry. You can't see them."

"But... when I'm, uh, better? I can go home?"

The others exchanged uncomfortable glances. It was Jasper's turn to explain.

"You need to understand, Josephine, you're at your wildest, your strongest, your most bloodthirsty right now. It can sometimes take years - decades - for new vampires to get their impulses under control. Now, I won't let you hurt anyone. Nobody here will... you just can't be anywhere near humans for as long as it takes for you to gain control."

"You keep saying vampire."

"We do."

"That's... real, then. That's an actual- that's something that exists."

"That's what we are, and that's what you are, too."

"... Right."

"It takes a while to wrap your head around it, but... don't worry. You'll get there."


	5. An Ode to The Major Arcana

Josephine stood infront of a full length mirror, marvelling at her new appearance. It had taken just over 48 hours of feeding out in the forest and guzzling down hundreds of portions of the animal blood the Cullens kept in storage to settle her last bout of insatiable thirst. Bella had been with her for every second of it, insisting she was now her responsibility. In fact, Bella had only just left her side.

Josie's reflection was someone she didn't recognise - not really. Her hair had always been an enigma, but it had always been somewhat dull and weird looking. Now it was vibrant and the mix of fawn and auburn combined actually made sense, somehow. The effect was unique now, while it had been strange before. Josephine's multi-faceted grey and hazel flecked eyes were now an alarming blood red that she didn't dare focus on for too long. She was still small, pale and thin - except now she was petite, flawlessly porcelain and angelic. Wherever she looked for flaws and ugly parts of her she'd grown up hating, she could now only find elements of her own perfection.

Josephine Luella Suzette Rayne-Sawyer was actually... beautiful. More than beautiful, even - stunning - an exquisite work of art. She was dainty, like a doe, and just as sweet and pure, too. The only thing to marr the angelic effect were the eyes, and Bella had told her they wouldn't be a permanent fixture - a bonus of their chosen diet.

Josephine contemplated her new circumstances, and for the millionth time that hour, resisted the growing urge to call her big brother.

It turned out that she and Alice were close in size, and the pixie-like vampire had been all too happy to lend Josephine enough clothes to fill three entire wardrobes. She stood now, in a floral lilac jumpsuit Alice had given her, simply admiring her new self. For the very first time in her life... Josie was happy with the way she looked. Compact and delicate, elfin and soft - she was unbelievably gorgeous, and as she felt her insecurities finally melt away, after 20 long years, she treated her reflection to a smile, and it was like the sun peeking out from behind some clouds.

As she moved, Josie found that every inch of her now functioned with an ethereal elegance and grace. She was the perfect predator, she had been told. Every part of her meant to entice and charm her prey right into her arms. It was more than a little terrifying.

Josephine joined everyone in the room that housed Edward's piano - with the wall of glass looking out onto the forest that met the edge of the Cullens' land. Initially, she was unnoticed in her entrance, as she was small and newly silent, but the soft flow of whatever it was Edward was playing at the piano came to a casual halt, and she knew he must have picked up on her thoughts, or something. As she had drunk her way through over half of the Cullens' refrigerated supply, Josephine had listened to Edward as he answered questions she sent his way mentally, and learned quite a lot about her new, temporary family. Not everything, but enough to make her feel a little more welcome than she did before.

Josie wandered gracefully towards the piano, taking subconscious note of the vampires in the room. Including herself, there were six: Edward, Alice, Jasper, Josephine and Esme. The others were out hunting, apparently.

"Do you play?"

Josephine had been staring at the piano, wide eyes roaming it's exquisiteness.

"... No." She placed a hand to her throat, struggling with the insistent, constant pain as it flared once again. "But my sister did... does. Thea - she composes her own stuff, too."

Edward nodded, eyes zeroed in on her as he listened to the echo of one of her sister's self composed pieces. It was all she could remember of it, but from Edward's quietly indulging expression, she figured it was enough.

"That's quite a talent."

"She once wrote and performed a song about all 22 of the major Arcana in one day."

Edward raised an eyebrow.

"It was half an hour long."

He exhaled, clearly impressed, then glanced over her shoulder. At first she assumed it must be Jasper, as he was never very far away from her (being the newborn expert) - but then she caught that scent, and whipped round to find none other than Esme stood before her with a glass of blood. She smiled sweetly, offering it to Josephine as if she were a mother giving her child a Capri Sun and a box of raisins to snack on. It was just as welcome. Desperate to be polite but overridden by her untamed impulses, she all but snatched the glass from Esme's hands, and moved at vampiric speed to the other side of the room, a hand over the glass to prevent the blood spilling. She sunk into a half protective crouch, and showcased her teeth - demonstrating that the blood was hers, and hers alone.

Josie was out of control of her actions while she was still so young and new to the vampiric lifestyle, but the more normal part of herself that still existed within a small corner of her mind was horrified and ashamed, feeling that she must have offended everyone else in the room.

But she couldn't have been more wrong. In fact... they were reacting positively - smiling at her - and, obligingly, moving back to allow her room and show her they were no threat to her meal. Even Jasper, who was usually so stiff and stern faced around her was seemingly comfortable to watch her like this.

"It's because he never got to oversee Bella's newborn stage. She skipped right over it. You're the return to normalcy he needed, Josephine." Once again, Edward was there to answer her unasked question. It was actually kinda touching, too, that he'd picked his way through the majority of feral, newborn thoughts until her found her more humane ones... and chose to pay attention to those instead of the others.

Without realising it, she was uncoiling - straightening up - her eyes becoming a lot less wild and her stance altering to something more at ease. A foreign sense of very subtle calm washed over her, and Josie's eyes flicked automatically over towards Jasper - whom she knew to be the perpetrator - and her mouth curved upwards ever so slightly. He returned it.

It was then that Josephine realised she could actually exist like this.


	6. Have You Seen This Girl?

A month passed in the same way. Josephine got to know the family, she hunted, and she distracted herself enough to keep herself from going to see her family.

Bella had been gone for a few weeks - visiting Renesmee at the reservation. Josephine felt particularly awful about this, as it was her very presence that forced Edward and Bella to be apart from their daughter for weeks on end. Renesmee was half human, was what Carlisle had explained to her. She'd been sent to live with Jacob (the werewolf who had imprinted on her seconds after her birth) on the reservation while Josephine curbed her bloodthirsty nature and worked on regaining her self control.

Oddly enough... Josephine found that she actually missed Bella while she was away, which was conflicting for her because she still didn't know whether she worshipped or despised Bella for making her a vampire. With the rest of the family around to keep her company, she was bonding with the Cullens enough to lean more towards thinking of Bella's actions favourably, in her absence.

Permeating that secondary struggle, on top of her main (newborn) one... was a third that she hadn't been expecting.

It had been one week into her new life when a police cruiser parked up outside the front of the house, and Teddy and his partner showed up to ask the family for information on Josephine's whereabouts. She was hidden away, of course, while this all happened. Josie didn't know why she hadn't considered the very likely possibility that this would happen, because her older brother was a member of the Forks police department, and knowing him as well as she did, she knew that he would never give up on her in any timeline in any universe, in any possible scenario. Teddy would search for her until his dying day - she knew - and there was nothing she could do about it.

Carlisle handled the situation perfectly, of course. He was calm and accommodating, giving away just enough of the truth for the interviewers to find his answers believable. There was no danger of Teddy suspecting the Cullens of anything at all - there never had been - not even when he made his way over to their residence. It was very understandable that Teddy show up here, after all, considering the fact that Josephine had left home to go up into the mountainous area bordering the Cullens' land on the day she disappeared.

It was hard to watch her beloved older brother question every member of the family desperately, looking as desolate and heartbroken as he was. He was unshaven and unkempt, unusually pale and gaunt. It was obvious to Josephine, even from atop a tree far away from the house, looking through the window, that Teddy hadn't slept in quite a while. She worried over when he had last eaten, showered... sat down, even, since she went missing. The guilt and longing gnawed away at her and got worse and worse every time Teddy rang the doorbell in the next three weeks.

On the month mark of her disappearance, Josephine was sat on the narrow sill of the window furthest from the ground, by the grand staircase. She was so high up that she could simply reach up and her fingers would stroke the ceiling - but still she sat idly, uncaring, as her leg swung to and fro. There was no danger anymore, not to her. Mentally, she could suffer all she liked, but physically... it was now very difficult for her to injure herself. It was a shock to her system, having been clumsy for all 20 years of her life.

"I just had a vision."

Josephine knew the scent instantaneously. "Hi, Alice."

"Please tell me, Josephine, that you are not really planning on staying up there all night long."

"I'm not really planning on staying up here all night long."

She didn't have to look away from the window to know that Alice's eyes were narrowed, her lips were pursed and that her nose had wrinkled up like an irritated fairy.

"It wasn't any funnier when I foresaw you saying that a minute ago."

Josephine sighed, shifting off of her perch and landed very delicately by Alice on the hardwood floor. She was immediately enveloped in a hug, and as she always did, she chose to lean into it and take all the comfort she could get.

"They're holding a vigil, you know?"

"I know." Alice hummed by her ear.

"I know you know."

That night, she watched the vigil on the news, the Cullens gathered around her.


End file.
